Forget what you think you know about hackers, those mischievous computer nerds who live for the challenge of breaching the defences of computer networks.

There’s a different kind of hacker: software programmers capable of breaking with tradition and developing new products. Dozens of the latter, the good guys, were on hand Sunday at Ottawa’s first health hackathon, and they were behind a parade of ideas and prototypes for improving health care before a panel of judges.

The three-day event, held at the headquarters of e-commerce firm Shopify, put programmers together with health administrators, physicians, nurses and product designers who brainstormed all weekend. The weekend’s activities were the culmination of six months of preparation in partnership with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.

Among the ideas that emerged during a Sunday afternoon pitch-fest:

Software tool that would allow physicians to answer common questions from patients such as how many times a particular ailment has been diagnosed, and what are the success rates of dealing with it.

Another team addressed the problem of pruning the vast amount of medical literature to concentrate on what’s important for particular patients. The proposed solution: create an online software platform that will allow thousands of medical peers and experts to identify the most relevant medical literature and citations. The team said it would later use artificial intelligence to automate the process.

One team proposed a watch-like device that would predict when autistic children are edging toward a “meltdown”. The device would monitor the child’s heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature and apply a proprietary algorithm for spotting possible trouble.

Other teams advanced software that would make it easier for teens identify potential risks of sexually transmitted infections and for families to monitor the health of seniors.

Many of the pitches involved applications at a very early stage of development and need considerable work before they will be able to find a commercial market. Nevertheless, one pitch by a pair of Ottawa family doctors — Caitlin Schwartz and Suzanne Rutherford — shows some real promise.

They have helped to develop an application called Women’s Health Information Tool aimed at patients overwhelmed by which medical tests they require and when, and which vitamins they need. The app is focused on preventing disease, not on giving advice about medicines for acquired illnesses. For that, the family doctor should come into play, the doctors told the audience.

Schwartz and Rutherford said they intend to launch the product this November at the Canadian Family Medicine Forum.

While part of Hacking Health Ottawa’s mission is to provide would-be health entrepreneurs with a forum, it also tries to put them in touch with people who can help in other ways, for example by offering financing or feedback.

“This is not just a three-day inspirational moment,” said Haidee Thanda, the founder and leader of Hacking Health Ottawa, one of dozens of chapters worldwide. Thanda and fellow Hacking Health colleague Karine Diedrich spent the past two years building partnerships with organizations such as Carleton University’s Faculty of Engineering and Design, Ottawa University’s School of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.

Hacking Health Ottawa is part of an organization that five years ago had just one chapter — in Montreal. The non-profit was the inspiration of Luc Sirois, who in 2012 was working for Nightingale Informatix, an electronic medical records company. Sirois combined with a Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jesshan Chowdhury and others with the idea of accelerating a much-needed push to modernize medicine.

Haidee, an educational technologist, in 2014 attended one of the events sponsored by Hacking Health Montreal and was obviously impressed.

“We saw gaps in innovation in health care,” she said, “and we needed to create a program around the process.”

Judging by the weekend show at Shopify, it’s more like a community — one that still needs to prove it can build things that really will make health care better.

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.